Wormhole Foundation unveils a Cosmos appchain called Gateway

• Gateway is a Cosmos-powered appchain.
• It is designed to allow for access to unified liquidity in the Cosmos ecosystem.

Decentralized messaging protocol Wormhole has released its application-specific blockchain dubbed Wormhole Gateway. The appchain is powered by the Cosmos SDK, and aims at broadening access and liquidity with the blockchain platform’s ecosystem.

Wormhole Foundation, which announced Gateway on Friday, said the appchain is “compatible and complementary to IBC.”

Wormhole to connect 23 blockchains in Cosmos

According to details shared in a blog post, Gateway allows Wormhole to connect 23+ blockchains, including Osmosis, Evmos and Neutron, across six runtimes to Cosmos. This is achieved through a liquidity router that allows users to bridge funds to any appchain within the Cosmos ecosystem at no extra bridging fees, the protocol noted.

Introducing ✨✨Wormhole Gateway✨✨ – an application-specific blockchain, powered by the @cosmos SDK.

Gateway’s purpose is to help broaden access (and bring liquidity) to the Cosmos ecosystem while also improving Wormhole’s security and sovereignty. pic.twitter.com/qG1kyvcnoY

— Wormhole🌪 (@wormholecrypto) July 21, 2023

Gateway is also designed to improve Wormhole’s security and sovereignty. Security is key to the protocol given the impact of a February 2022 hack on the Wormhole bridge that saw a hacker 120,000 wETH worth $325 million. The exploit on the Solana-Ethereum bridge saw the price of SOL declined sharply amid community reaction to the news.

As part of enhancing security across the Cosmos ecosystem, Wormhole introduced Governor, a module designed to limit cross-chain contagion in the event of a hack.

In June, Wormhole introduced Automatic Relayers, a decentralised network of relayers that allows for cross-chain messaging that developers can tap into without having to develop, run or manage an off-chain component. With this developers can deploy a fully-functional cross-chain dApp via a single solidity contract.